


Memory (Let it live again).

by Triddlegrl



Series: Sound Of Music [4]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-12
Updated: 2016-11-12
Packaged: 2018-08-30 12:56:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8533933
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triddlegrl/pseuds/Triddlegrl
Summary: When the darkness encroaches this is how Tony copes. In Tony's mind there is a great many rooms...





	

A/N: This is an company piece to The Sound of Music it's told in first person because we're going into Tony's cerebral space and it felt fitting. That and I love that style lol. Hopefully you like this piece as much as I enjoyed weaving it together.

 

1\. [Any Dream Will Do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA1EqovahRw)

2\. [Memory](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v_A6DalQUc)

For the obvious reason, Sound Of Music is a very music influenced body of work. FIOT and I created several playlists just for our writing and brain storming sessions. In keeping with that tradition I created one for this story. When naming this fic it was a battle between the two songs that resonated most with Tony's journey and what I was doing: Memory, from the Broadway musical Cats and Any Dream Will Do, from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. Obviously Memory won out but I am providing links to both as they are lovely and you might as well get the full emotional experience.

-Enjoy-

 

 

 

Tony doesn’t like to admit it (even to himself) but he was young enough once, that his mind didn’t terrify him. Young enough not to know the full extent of its power… or for that matter, it’s brokenness.

He knows better now and its part of the reason he likes to create things.

He likes to invent things because he’s all about forward motion. Into the future, onto the next discovery. Perhaps he’s hoping to discover the cure for all the heartache (all the bumps and bruises) he has compiled along the way.

If not for himself then for everybody else, then. Just because his memories have the potential to eat him alive doesn’t mean everybody else must be as sorry. Does it?

Perhaps he’s just hoping that if he moves fast enough his demons won’t be able to keep up.

They always do.

-Maria-

He was a quite baby. At first. According to his mother he slipped into the world with minimal fuss, staring in wide eyed confusion at the bright lights and the faces of the doctors and nurses, discomfited by the changing of hands, but easily captivated once more by the first sight of his mother’s face.

Tony remembers it differently.

She tells him the story when he’s two and if she’s shocked that he remembers the sparkly barrette she had in her hair, she doesn’t say so. But then by then it’s already very clear that Tony is different.

He has an eidetic memory. That means that his mind captures data, the inputs of sights, sound, touch, and emotional resonance and stores it better than a moving picture.

His mind is an endless archive of them (moving pictures) and that's enough to make anyone mad as a hatter. So it comes down to how you sort, what you shut away, what you allow to gather dust and to dull with time.

The option to retrieve it and blow the dust off is always there. For instance, he has no trouble recalling that barrette in his mother’s hair the day he was born, as well as the overwhelming cacophony of loud breathes and booming voices that had assaulted him from all angles and made him numb with his very first recognizable emotion. Gutless terror.

Before birth he had only ever known the rhythmic ebb and flow of the womb, his tiny body suspended in a great darkness… he can perfectly recall that dark and the sound of his mother’s heart beat surrounding him. It had been his entire world, before he even had a concept of worlds or the passing of time.

Rhodey asked once what it was like (because the first thing people want to know when you tell them your mind stores everything is whether you remember being born for some reason). Tony found it difficult to explain, and he doesn’t think he’d do any better now as an adult. How does one explain the very beginning of themselves?

Tony’s memory might be as perfect as pictures but he is still human. Much of how one recalls things are based on associations, and in his beginning, everything was brilliantly (terrifyingly) new. Existence, like reality, had exploded outward in one catastrophic bang.

His earliest memories are hard to process. They are strangely painted, often distorted, impressions of sights, sounds and smells, through the perception of an undeveloped consciousness experiencing fear and discomfort for the first time.

Portions of them he can paint over, apply mature understanding to (such as his mother’s face and her favorite barrette) but there is no erasing the sickening imprint of terror that is seeped into each brush stroke. Birth is violent and Tony deals with those memories the way he deals with all his childhood trauma. He doesn’t. They go on the shelf to be buried by years and dust.

There are a few exceptions to this rule. His mother is one of them.

Though he knows it means pain, Tony could no more avoid her as he walked through the halls of his mind, than he could avoid himself. She's more a part of him than his blood and bone.

Her rooms are like her, inviting and sunlit, and what is stored in them is more precious than treasure. And it helps sometimes, for Tony to think of her. To go in his mind and live those memories again. And so he does.

He settles in the dark of his room and lets the dust fly, catching moonlight in the recesses of his mind.

With Mama it always comes back to her sound.

Her gentle humming, the silly songs they sang to celebrate joy and sadness, rain and sunshine as they came at them in turns. Her laughter. Her exasperated sighs. Her chatter. The click of her tongue and tap of her foot. Her breath. Her heartbeat. Her music.

_“Fa la ninna, fa la nanna, cara bambino nella braccia della mamma.”_

He’s five and he has a bug. His cheeks are hot and he’s sweaty and miserable. Mama lays in the bed with him, his head resting against her chest.

_“Go to sleep, darling boy, go to sleep in your mother’s arms.”_

 

-Hughard-

 

He’s crawling almost as soon as his mother puts him down on his stomach and by six months he’s hard to keep track of.

Jarvis and his mother are finding him tucked up in strange places. Usually in his father’s workshop.

Tony explains that he likes the machines, the click and whir of their gears and parts in his ears. They lull him to sleep. Even Hughard isn’t insane enough to bring his infant son to the shipyard before he’s a year old, but Papa always pretends not to notice when Tony sneaks in and finds a place for himself under his desk or the drafting table, to take a nap or just sit and watch.

It’s not that long though before Tony’s figured out how the tools work and he’s never been that content with sitting.

When his clumsy infantile fingers accidentally meet the teeth of a saw Mama yells and tells Papa he needs to put a lock on his shop. He does.

The next day when Mama and Jarvis turn their backs for just a moment Tony slips out of sight once more, but this time he’s easily found by the surprised cry he lets loose and the utterly childish way he sobs his heart out outside the locked door of the workshop.

He claims not to remember it when he’s a sullen teenager and his mother tries to speak of it later.

Neither it or the playroom that Hughard builds him full of mechanical toys that click and whir as their pistons and cogs move so that Tony can finally go to sleep without crawling into bed with them.

She knows he’s lying and he knows they are both thinking of sparkly barrettes.

By the time he is three he’s torn the toys all apart and made them better anyway, because toys are for babies.

Tony wants to make real things. Big powerful engines to put in the boats his father makes, along with canons and guns that make the biggest booms (because the boom is half the fun).

He’s got a bright future ahead of him and some big shoes to fill. He knows because Papa tells him. He never lets him forget.

Even though Mama frets, each morning when Papa finishes his breakfast he wipes his mustache with his napkin the exact same way, and says to Tony with a wink, “Well I was hoping they’d send me a crack assistant, but I guess I’ll make due with you instead.”

Those early associations with words like ‘responsibility’ and ‘legacy’ and 'father' are surprisingly sweet. A sweet turned sour with age, sure, but sweet none the less in all their naivete.

Hughard’s memory is full of words. If Tony could set fire to the perfectly impressed picture shows in his mind he would have set his brain ablaze years ago to burn out all of Hughards speeches and rants and cutting remarks. Quips and quotes and shouted demands.

But the memory of the man is tumescent. It’s bloated and sick in Tony’s head and it supersedes everything else. Taints everything else. Even the memory of his mother.

He hates the man just for that.

It doesn’t matter that in his earliest memories, Hughard teaches him the basics of engineering or that his father had once held his hands and delighted in their accomplishments, because he’d done all of that with such high hopes for Tony.

Hughard Stark had thought his son was going to change the world, but that was before he realized what a disappointment Tony turned out to be. Was. Is.

But Tony likes to torture himself, so sometimes he goes to his father's rooms pours the mental equivalent of a drink, pulls out those old reels and lets them play on loop just to remind himself what a stupid child he was.

“Hughard! For God’s sake, what are you doing?!” mama is shouting as she comes running into the room. She's followed by Jarvis who has another bucket of water which he quickly throws on the smoking pile of metal and gears in the center of the workshop that had once been a mock up engine.

“Mama! We made fire!” Tony hollers triumphantly from his Papa's arms and Mama's glare intensifies.

“Not intentionally! Right Tony?" Papa hastily interjects, jiggling Tony as if his compliance would come tumbling out of him. Tony's still giggling as Mama marches over to take him from Papa and Papa is saying, "A minor accident but we’ve got it under control here Peach.”

“I don’t think it’s working Papa. She still looks mad.” Tony whispers, only even smart as he is he hasn't quite managed to to figure out how to make his vocal chords go as quiet as he'd like because Mama definitely hears him.

"I'm not mad at you Tony. Your father on the other hand," she snaps, and Tony looks worriedly to Papa who winks at him.

"I bet, if we both gave her a big ol' kiss she couldn’t stay mad. How's that Tony?”

Tony grins and Mama narrows her eyes in warning, but Tony can tell she's already holding back a smile even as she warns.

"If you think we aren't having words later Hughard Stark you can just-" Tony never finds out what she would have done because a second later he's mashing his face against her soft cheeck and giggling as Papa attacks from the other side.

Tony is not three anymore but it’s only here in these memories that he can admit… that even if he could set his father’s memory on fire, he’d still want to lay down and burn with them.

-Stanislov-

Obadiah is easy to remember. If Hughard is a tumor, Stanislov is a black oil creeping through his veins. He couldn’t see it back then; how insidious his poison was. Tony’s early associations are warm hued and heavy with the desperate need of a child for recognition.

Obi is there to take Tony’s hand and lead him out of the workshop when Hughard snaps at him for messing up his work, and to explain that his papa doesn’t mean to be short... it’s just that he has a lot on his mind right now.

But Tony’s their little man, and Starks don’t cry.

He’s six.

Obadiah flashes through Tony’s mind in pictures, glossy and pristine like the pages of a magazine, only in full color. He’s soft eyes and hearty chuckles, tinkling crystal glasses filled with bright amber liquid and the acrid smell of cigar smoke.

Where Hughard has grown tired of Tony always being underfoot and is always calling for Maria to ‘come get the boy’, Tony is uncle Obi’s little man, and Tony collects every gem of advice on manhood that Uncle Obi readily doles out.

He and Hughard are alike that way.

He's six and Obi lets him try a sip of his dink, and even though it’s sour in his mouth and pungent in his nose Tony pretends to like it.

“Your Papa’s in a pickle Tony, my boy. If the men refuse to work then we don’t have a product and if we don’t produce a product, well… it’s a rough spot to be in Tony. I won’t lie to you.”

“I ought to sack the lot of them! It’s ungrateful is what it is.” Hughard barks from the corner, the ice in his glass chinking as he gestures violently. Some of his drink spills onto the floor but he doesn’t appear to notice. Tony doesn’t say anything. He knows better than to draw his father’s attention when he gets like this.

Obadiah, like always, seems to know the question at the top of his mind without Tony needing to ask.

“Now Hugh, you and I both know Maria wouldn’t have that. It’s all these strikes and this talk of reformation Tony, it’s getting people worked up." He says, turning to Tony once more. "Some people aren’t happy with their share; they want more and to push the others out. The board wants your father to pass some pretty strict referendums that would make things hard for the revolutionaries to keep disrupting the business and make the men at the yard a lot safer, but… Well, it’s complicated.”

Tony might be young but he understands that what Obi means is that Tony and his mother are the complication.

It’s the Italians who want reformation, who are losing jobs and land to more and more Austrian homes and businesses. It’s the Italians who whisper in corners and plaster posters on walls and ask themselves why they farm, pick, and build for a monarchy that sets them apart and thinks of them as second class.

He knows his grandfather used to own the yard before his father did. Uncle Isiah and Nonno still work there. He wonders if they are some of the ones causing trouble. He doesn't doubt that uncle Isiah would and Obi is right. Mama would never let Hughard fire him.

Tony takes another burning swallow of the liquor in Obi's glass but this time can’t help but cough as it burns its way down, and Obi chuckles at him even as Hughard turns and glares in their direction.

“Tony?” he barks as if he’s forgotten Tony was even in the room. It’s not unlikely. “Christ Obi, Maria will kill us both if she sees you giving him that.”

“Sorry Kiddo, looks like the funs over. Women can be awfully delicate Tony but you can’t fault them. Truthfully I wouldn’t have it any other way. That’s what we do as men, we protect them. It’s the most important honor, isn’t it, protecting your house?” Obi winks at Tony and ruffles his dark head of hair and says to Hughard without looking away from where Tony is working, his fingers black with engine grease. “He looks more and more like Isiah every day. They’ll see it too. But We can path his way. We've got to.”

Hughard grunts and Obi winks at Tony once more.

"We can be glad you got your old man’s nose, can't we my boy? Thank God for that."

Tony agrees, though he has no idea what relevance that has to anything, or why it's a good thing.

 

-Isiah & Antonia-

 

Some memories are better left buried.

When Tony is two he asks his parents why he doesn't have any grandparents.

"My parents died young," Papa explains. "Being an orphan meant I had to grow up fast and make my own way. Obi and I started Stark Industries from nothing, saved every penny we could make to by a shack at the edge of the river and scraps to start building. "

Tony has heard this story before and normally he listens avidly because he knows this is his legacy and it is very important. One day he will be in charge and it will be up to him to make sure Stark Industries survives.

But he's two, and weighing heavily on his mind is the realization that all he has seen indicates that his family is incomplete. He understands that people die, but why are there no pictures? Why has he never even heard their names spoken? Everyone has them so where are his?

"But don't you have parents mama? What about them?"

Mama looks at Papa and she looks sad. Papa suddenly looks angry.

"Into the bath with you Tony. You're ripe as a stable."

It's not long after that when Mama wakes him up after Papa has left for the yard. As she dresses him she asks him if he can keep a secret. Tony might only be two but he's exceptionally smart for his age. He can already read on his own without Mama's help. He nods his head eagerly and Mama smiles, though Tony thinks it does not reach her eyes like it should.

Jarvis drives them down out of the hills and across the city to a modest apartment block in a corner of the city where everything couldn't be more different than what Tony is used to.

Gone are the emperors flags hanging from doors and windows to be replaced by flowers and brightly colored flags whose symbols Tony suddenly needs to know. Even the sea has heeled to the rich smell of baked bread and savory delights that hang in the air. Everyone seems to have dark hair and eyes, and some of them have darker faces than he's ever seen before, and best of all there is an unrepentant air of levity to everything.

The morning is beautiful so people stop and remark on it. They smell roses. They argue over nothing as if they have all the time in the world and then they laugh like old friends, wasting more time reminiscing. There is music pouring out of the open doors of a café and a man is singing as he sweeps. A woman is rushing to greet her friend with open arms brightly exclaiming and waving, "Buongiorno!"

Walking here feels like taking a deep breath and letting it out slow.

"Mama they speak Italian!" Tony exclaims with wonder. Only not everyone is. They pass a pair of old men who are yabbering at one another in what might as well be chicken clucks to Tony's ears. It's strange. He knows they aren't speaking German but it's like they're trying. Every now and then a word will sort of make sense, only it's as if they're all babies again garbling the sounds and mashing them together.

"Mama why can't they speak right?"

"They're Jews Tony and they're speaking a kind of Hebrew, it's... well, long ago our people only spoke Hebrew but we've traveled far since them. Sometimes two languages meet and decide they might as well be friends, so one asks the other for a dance."

Tony giggles and rolls his eyes. He knows languages can't dance. They're not physical. But he likes something about the picture it makes anyway.

When they reach the apartment building Mama grips his hand extra tight and Tony looks anxiously at her. She stands and stares at the building for a moment, looking strangely lost and Tony squeezes her hand.

"Mama. Is the surprise in there?"

She squares her jaw and pulls one of the little bells by the door and smiles down at him.

"Yes, it is. And you must remember darling that it is our secret. Won't you?"

He's nodding as above them a window opens and a woman pokes her head out with a gasp and a shriek.

"Maria? Maria Carboni you absolute Schtnker! Wait right there-" The woman turns her head to holler back inside the room, "A cold Isiah you lying fool! You've never been sick a day in your life. Oh why didn't you tell me she was coming."

A flurry of shouting and rapid footsteps follow and then Tony watches as the woman comes flying out the door and envelopes his mother in the fiercest of hugs. They cling tightly to one another. And Tony watches with wide eyes as his mother begins to cry and laugh all at once as if the two urges are at war with one another.

The strange woman grips Mama's face and talks at her in Hebrew before pressing kisses to her wet cheeks.

"Mama?" He hedges, his voice high and thin with uncertainty and the two women part, laughing and wiping at their teary eyes.

"Tony, come here bambino. I want you to meet my very best friend."Taking his hand she gently tugs him toward the woman who is beaming down at him, lips all a tremble like she might start to cry again. "This is your aunt Antonia."

"Like my name?" He asks and Antonia laughs, pulling him into a great big hug.

"I've known your mama since we were barely knee high. And just look at you boychick. Oh Maria he's just a little cherub." She pinches his cheek which hurts but then she kisses the spot a moment later and Tony decides he likes it and the smell of her perfume.

"How old are you now Tony?"

He answers proudly and her eyes widen in shock and then disbelief.

"Two?! Goodness you speak well. He'll be giving sermons with the rabbi next thing we know."

"Not if Stark has anything to say about it." A male voice interjects and everything goes quiet. Tony glances curiously around Aunt Antonia's wide shoulders to see a tall man leaning in the doorway watching them.

He has dark hair just like Mama's and he looks familiar though it takes Tony a moment to realize why. He looks like Tony. Older of course, sharper in some angles and softer in others but once Tony realizes it it's impossible not to grasp that they are blood.

Obi was right, their noses are different. Isiah's stands out on his face but he doesn't look bad for it.

Ton's an adult now so he knows very well what difference it makes.

"That's your uncle Isiah." Mama answers and her voice is stressed with hope and fear, but she doesn't move. "My brother."

Uncle Isiah arches a dark eyebrow and doesn't move either.

"You sure about that Mrs. Stark?"

Tony doesn't like this man, because he makes Mama bite her lip and look like she's going to cry.

Of course she doesn't, because Tony is there and Mama is braver than anyone in the whole world, but Tony doesn't want another uncle if he's like this.

Antonia makes a rude hacking sound in her throat and Tony looks to see that she is glowering at Isiah with her hands on her hips.

"Oh don't be an ass!" Turning to Mama Antonia grabs her hand. "You're here and so is he. A cold he tells me, this from the man who worked on our wedding day. Bah! Come now, what are we hanging around on the stoop for? We just finished breakfast but I'm sure there's something I can throw together. I baked the bread just yesterday. You remember Maria, my mother's recipe?"

Antonia drags them inside chattering the entire way like a magpie. Finally, Tony thinks. Someone who talks almost as fast as he does!

 

-Jarvis & Ana-

 

His aunt and his uncle, nonna and nonno, their memories are few but they are treasured.

There are certain memories that are bitter that Tony indulges in like medicine.

He's seventeen. He's beside his mother in the car. Anger is burning bright and hot within his chest and he resolutely ignores the dull pain of her betrayal as steadfastly as he ignores her softly spoken attempts to explain how she thinks it's a good thing, that Hughard wants to take his whole life away. Shut him away behind thick abbey walls like the dirty secret he desperately hopes to forget.

She sighs and gives up for the time being, but not before pleading that one day she hopes he understands.

He doesn't even look at her. He can't know that in minutes she'll be dead, not when he's seventeen and stupid (selfish) but he knows now how it will end, and sometimes he lets it play.

Those memories he grits his teeth and throws back like it's a hangover cure because it is. It's a reminder.

But there are other memories that sober just as well, that don't leave him shaking and heaving with the need to be sick. These memories are rich with scents: roses in the garden, lye soap and shoe polish, flour, soil and bubbling bone broth.

Mama and Hughard travel back and forth between the Stark Yards in Pola and Germany but Tony stays behind at the summer villa whenever he can. Jarvis and Ana run the summer villa, and that above all makes it Tony’s favorite of their houses.

He doesn’t like the Hamburg house. It isn’t like in Pola where Tony can have the run of the place, swimming in the cove, playing in the vineyards, exploring the ruins, or trekking through the city to his grandparent’s house for the day. There are too many rules in Hamburg, where most of his father’s friends and business associates live. Tony always must be on his best behavior in Hamburg and there are always a million parties at the house which means he has to either get dressed up and shown off, or stay up in his room all night.

The summer villa is home. It’s perched near the top of a great hill so that from the rear they can see the mountains reaching up into the sky, and the front looks out over the farms that bleed down into the city center just before it meets the glittering turquoise sea.

Their neighbors are farmers whom Mama pays well for their prized meat and produce, so they don't mind that Tony likes to wander their fields and vineyards when he escapes his governess and the mind numbing boredom of his lessons with Herr Vonkov. Jarvis scolds him for skipping out on lessons but he is never overly cross with him. Not like Hughard is whenever one of the people hired to see to him goes packing.

He remembers trying to be good in those days. The strain of doing his best not to screw up only to fail every time wearing him thin.

Tony has been through many tutors but Herr Vonkov in particular is a nightmare. He is always caning Tony's bottom and coming up with humiliating punishments for his smart mouth.

Tony is nine when his tutor makes him eat soap after he starts reciting the entire textbook in Latin.

He shouldn’t have done it, but they are working on a new vessel down at the yard. A submarine! Tony had seen the plans for it on his father’s desk a few months ago and Hughard and Obi have talked about nothing else ever since.

He wants to be there so badly, but Vankov is prattling on about how Tony needs to study and how if he doesn’t take his education seriously he’s going to be a worthless drain on society, and Tony just starts reciting from the first page, because he already knows this!

He knew everything Vankov has tried to teach him before he even set foot in the door but the submarine is new, and Tony has so many ideas that could help, but Tony is stuck in the house _wasting_  time with an idiot who won’t listen.

The soap is foul tasting. Herr Vonkov grips his cheeks hard enough to bruise and jams the bar of soap in his mouth.

Tony knows it’s a mistake but he loses his temper. He spits out the bar, and as it drops to the floor with a dull thud he sneers, “You can’t wash away the truth! Or don’t you know that either?”

Vonkov turns bright red and swells up like a bullfrog, a vein ticking at his temple. He canes Tony worse than he ever has. He beats his bottom and the back of his legs until they’re numb.

Even now as an adult he thinks Vonkov didn’t mean to go as far as he did, that he might have stopped if Tony had cried out or begged an apology. But with each hit Tony’s lips clamp tighter. Her refuses to make a sound through the whole thing, even though there are tears running down his face and his backside feels like it’s on fire. He bites through his lip.

Vonkov seems to come back to himself when he realizes he’s in danger of whipping his pupil bloody.

He makes Tony get up, tells him to write on the chalkboard 'A nasty tempered Jew, comes to no good', over and over until he is satisfied that the message has sunk in.

Tony does as he’s told and limps over to the board.

Ana comes to see why they are late for lunch. He doesn’t turn around to look at her but he hears the shocked inhale of breath she takes at the sight of the livid bruises and welts across the back of his legs. Vonkov tells her that Tony will not be eating until he has finished his punishment.

Tony thinks that's that, because Vankov is the teacher and Ana is just a servant and Vankov can discipline however he likes (it’s not like Tony’s parents are there to take an issue) only a few moments later Jarvis is there, telling Vonkov that he has to go and that Tony’s lessons are done for the week.

Vonkov is furious and threatens to tell Tony's parents when they return, but Jarvis looks ready to do the man in and it frightens him enough to scuttle when Jarvis offers to show him the door.

But Herr Vonkov's threats aren’t empty. Jarvis had no right to interfere like that and Tony doubts that Hughard will share Jarvis’ point of view that the punishment went too far. And what if Jarvis loses his job?

Tony doubts Ana would stay either if that happened. The thought of losing them both brings tears to his eyes faster than the cream that Jarvis is massaging into his skin.

“Your mother and Father won’t be pleased with Mr. Vonkov’s conduct, Tony. You can be sure of that.” Jarvis says and Tony, who is munching on one of Ana's apple tarts, shakes his head woefully as he mumbles.

“He’ll think I deserved it. What if he’s angry with you?”

"Don't you worry about that Master Antony. Let me have a look at your other side."

Tony winces as he rolls so that Jarvis can reach the welts on his left side and takes another big bite of his pastry. The tart flavor of the apples burn the cut on his lip but the buttery sweet crust is a welcome distraction from the pain in his body.

"Jarvis? Am I a Jew?" He asks, and the gentle hands smoothing cream into his skin go still.

"Well, you go to catholic mass, don't you? And you've been baptized." He says after a moment and Tony can hear what it is he doesn't say, the implicit ‘you tell me’ in his wording.

Tony shrugs and shoves more tart into his mouth as pain smarts up his backside.

"My Nonna and Nonno are Jews.” He admits for the first time to someone else, though he gets the feeling that Jarvis already knows. “So is uncle Isiah. Mama was one, but she converted. Only it doesn't seem to matter very much. Uncle Obi thinks people like Herr Vonkov would lose respect for Stark Industries if they knew we were related to Jews and he's right. People don’t like them."

He wonders how Vonkov knows he’s a Jew when Tony himself doesn’t even know if he is one or not.

They’re good Catholics. That’s very important to everybody.

It's why he and Mama visit his grandparents in secret and why Nonno and Isiah act as if they do not know them when they’re at the yard. It's why Isiah and Nonno are angry with mama and speak harsh words in Hebrew about his father.

It’s also why Mama isn't supposed to teach him Hebrew or any of that other 'Jewery' but thankfully Mama doesn’t mind and Tony picks things up quickly. Hughard didn’t even want him to learn Italian, but even Obi agreed that was overkill. Tony has to run the business someday and it's a useful skill to have.

It irritates Tony that it's just a _skill_ that Hughard allows. It's so much more than that but it's not like Hughard would care about that.

"I asked Isiah and he told me that if I'm my mother’s son, then I'm a Jew. If I am my father’s son then god help me." Tony snickers into his hands because the expression that had been on Uncle Isiah's face still makes him laugh. Over by the stove Ana chuckles and Jarvis clicks his tongue in disapproval at them both.

"Your uncle's advice seems to require that you survive splitting yourself into two parts. I would not advise it Master Antony, it sounds dreadfully drastic."

Ana chortles and Tony snickers so hard his butt hurts, but that just makes him laugh all the harder.

His parents come home a few days later. Tony is in the kitchen, helping Ana with dinner when Hughard storms in. His heart sinks into his stomach with anxiety when Hughard’s eyes lock on him, bright with anger as he barks, “Come here Tony, let me have a look at you.”

Tony hesitates and Ana nudges him forward.

Hughard inspects him critically and Tony worries because he can feel the tension in his hands, the way they tremble with suppressed rage. He’s sure he’s going to be hit again. Especially when Hughard growls.

“I suppose you were giving cheek again?”

Tony nods wordlessly, too wary of being struck to give a repeat performance. His backside already hurts so much he’s sure he’ll cry and he won’t do that in front of Hughard. Not anymore.

“He made me eat soap because I’m smarter than he is. And then I told him he couldn’t wash away the truth…” he confesses because he knows if he doesn’t, if he lies, it will be that much worse.

Hughard stares at him a long moment, and when his hand lands on top of Tony’s head he jumps but it just stays there. Tony waits, his heart hammering somewhere low and only sinking lower with each second.

But all Hughard says is, “Go on. You’d better go find your mother.”

-Yinsen-

 

Hughard finishes his breakfast the next morning and grunts as he wipes his mustache with his napkin. Tony doesn't look up, because the chances of Hughard talking to him are slim and even if he were, it would only mean that Hughard had decided to punish him after all.

"We should head out. I want to make it down to the yard early and see what progress they've made on the torpedo. I won't outfit the new submarine with anything else, not with how well she's sold. I suppose this means Obadiah is right and we'll have to widen our market."

"I suppose it does," he hears Mama reply. "Hector's offer seemed more than generous Hughard. You can't ignore him."

"If it's not one King breathing down my neck then it's an Emperor Maria. How do you think Wilhelm or Franz Joseph are going to feel if I start selling to Victor Emanuel? I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror if I climbed into bed with Italy.”

"They're not the enemy Hughard. Not yet, and we should all be doing our best to ease these tensions instead of poking at the embers or eventually they’ll catch fire.” Mama says and Hughard grunts. And then she says in this weird poignant way, “Besides. You never complained about climbing into bed before."

Tony glances up and rolls his eyes because they're looking at each other again, in the way that Tony has figured out means they want to have sex with something (probability being each other). He has a very vivid imagination that he doesn’t want to invoke.

He's read all about sex of course. It’s old news to Tony how babies are made and the physical mechanics are just that, mechanics. He’s not sure what all the fascination and secrecy is about. He might not mind a sibling…

Except, what if they were smarter than he was (better) and his parents both decided they'd gotten it right the second time around?

Tony scowls and drops his fork with a clatter on purpose and his father clears his throat.

"Quite right Peach, but it's the principle of the thing." He says, and thankfully they’re back to normal once more.

"Obadiah thought it was a good offer."

"Obi has fewer principles than I do." Hughard sniffs and Mama chuckles.

"Your principles Hughard are going to be the death of you. I think I'll bring you boys lunch today, and give poor Ana a break." He hears Mama say and it's only then that Tony realizes Hughard must be talking about him. It's him he's bringing to the yard. Tony's heart leaps in his chest.

"But what about school?" He asks, suspicious because it's just too good to be true. His father can't possibly want him at the yard, getting in people’s way when they are working on something so important (when he's just run off another tutor) but Mama is smiling at him and Ana is already reaching to pack up the food left on his plate.

"Vonkov isn't coming back." Hughard bites off with a snarl and Tony flinches. "It's time you learnt a thing or two about the weaponry anyway. But this contract is worth a great deal of money, so you do as you're told and mind that tongue of yours or I'll give you a whipping you won't forget. You hear me boy?"

"Yes Sir," Tony answers promptly because he's not stupid enough to get on Hughard's nerves when there are torpedoes at stake.

Tony remembers the few days that follow with a golden sort of bliss. They trickle through his mind like honey, sweet and smooth. The Roman Torpedo is a thing of beauty and he remembers her like his first kiss, sweeter even than his first time.

He's fifteen when he figures out what the big deal with sex is. But those are other memories for other times.

He's nine when his father hires a man named Jacob Yinsen to teach him and warns him that if he runs this one off he'll give Tony a whipping that will put Vonkov to shame.

He need not have worried. From day one Herr Yinsen is different.

He's tall and thin with a very tan complexion, thick glasses perched on a slightly beaky nose. He wears a funny little cap on his head that he explains is a kippah.

"What's it for?" Tony asks, ever curious and Yinsen cocks his head equally curious in return.

"Why do you ask?"

Tony blinks in surprise, unsure what sort of answer Yinsen is looking for. He knows that when teachers as questions they’re looking for _their_  answers and not necessarily the right ones.

"Because I want to know?" Tony tries, just to see what will happen.

"Ah. I see. Well, I suppose I wear it because I wish to remind myself that I am always under God's eye, wherever I go. Now, why did you wish to know?"

Hasn’t he already answered that?

"Because I didn't."

Yinsen’s lips tilt in a slight smile.

"You know Tony in some circles of thought, the search for knowledge is thought to be as close to the divine as man can get. What do you think of that?"

Tony thinks that’s a trap if he’s ever heard one. Nobody wants to hear a nine-year-olds real thoughts on religion and (non) existence of god.

"If they say so. I'm just a boy Herr Yinsen."

"Perhaps you are. That is for you to say.” Yinsen says slowly, cleaning his glasses with the hem of his shirt. “As for me, I think that knowledge is a worthy pursuit, but far more important is what a man does with what he knows."

And then he gently slides his glasses back on, looks right at Tony like his eyes can crack his chest open and examine his insides and asks the two questions that will haunt the rest of his life.

"Who are you Antony Stark and what are you here for?”

For the first time in the classroom Tony has no idea what to say. Yinsen smiles once more.

“Of course, you are quite young. You might not know. That is alright. There is no shame in the searching Antony. That is why it is so important that I as your teacher ask what questions are stirring here…" he points to his temple, and then once more to the center of Tony's chest. “…and here. And perhaps as we explore them, you will discover what it is you are here for.”

Few things in Tony’s life have ever inspired true awe, and even fewer people have managed it. Jacob Yinsen is one of them.

Who is Tony Stark? What is he here for?

He still doesn't know.

But in quiet moments he hears his teacher and reminds himself that there is no shame in the searching, even still.

And now that he has pupils of his own, he only hopes to do right by them.

Who are you? What are you here for?

Maybe with a bit of luck they’ll find their own answers.

-Rhodey-

 

“You’re a damn fool Tony!” Rhodey hisses, but he follows Tony out the back gate anyway.

It's been like that from the beginning. Tony meets Rhodey for the first time down in the city, at the docks.

He's nine again, and it's an Excursion Day with Yinsen which Yinsen says means the world becomes the classroom and Tony just knows means he gets to go outside and do something approaching fun.

They're at the docks because Tony wants to know more about trade and there is no place for that like the docks where the fishermen hawk their prized catches and merchants come to collect their goods.

There is so much to see and hear and it's fascinating how different all the sailors and traders look and sound, and how they bumble through communicating with the merchants who come to inspect their shipments and replenish their shelves.

Devi always brings silks and spices from India with him on his boat. He's impressed with how quickly Tony is picking up Hindi. Each time he comes to port he brings Tony new words and new stories about India.

Tony makes a promise that one day he will go to India himself and find Devi's family and greet them, and on that day they will all eat sugared dates and Tony will build Devi a fleet of ships so that he is richer than a raja. Devi laughs when he tells him this and says "May it be. May it be."

Tony has noticed that many of the city's immigrants etch out their lives here. Some find work on the farms further inland but many of them try to find work at the factories or on one of the ships, but if they're very lucky they'll find work at the shipyard which pays the best.

They'll take less pay because they're desperate and they don't have citizenship to protect them. Tony knows Hughard is against employing them on principle (those same principles that will kill him and Tony's mother one day). He says that it pushes tax paying citizens out of work; but Tony knows that equally important to his father is the fact that they are not German and that they are less for that.

"Charlatans and louts, the lot of them," he often mutters as they drive by beggars in the street, many who Tony knows will send their women to capture your attention with tearful pleas even as their boys empty your pockets. He's seen it happen.

"Don't you ever accept defeat Tony. A man is better off dead then down in the dirt with the dogs expecting handouts. If you want better, then you go out and you build better. If they try and stop you, then you show them that you're a Stark man."

Stark men are made of Iron.

Tony has heard this almost daily since the day of his birth and knowing Hughard, probably even before.

Stark men are tough. They don't second guess themselves as often as Tony does and they don't mess up the way he can't seem to stop doing.

They're not wrong (the way that Tony is).

Stark men might be made of iron but Tony Stark at nine years old appears to be the anomaly, the black sheep, because he's made of noise: music and giggles, silly questions and even sillier dreams. He's sweet natured and quick to give.

He's soft and Hughard knows it. Hates it. Tries to press it out of him with growing anxiousness as if Tony is a volatile chemical mixture that the slightest nudge could unleash chaos.

Hughard like any good smith attempts to forge Tony into a weapon unto himself: something useful, something sharp, sleek, and penetrating, something that will cut its own path through life and never get taken.

He succeeds, but he doesn't live to know it.

Tony and Yinsen are down at the docs and Tony is nine. He's excited because Devi's ship is in port and he wants to show him the engine designs he's been working on. He hasn't shown Hughard yet because they aren't ready. Hughard always spots the flaws, even the tiniest ones. They have to be perfect. And maybe, just maybe if they are, Hughard will agree to try it.

Mama gave them a list, because she likes to buy silk directly from Devi because the shops will just mark up the price and Devi always gives them a good deal.

Yinsen is helping the driver load the packages into the car, and Devi is giving Tony some new words to learn when it happens. Tony feels a hand slip into the pocket of his trousers and yank and by the time he turns around the older boy who has just robbed him is already disappearing into the crowd with Tony's spending money and his journal with his engine specs.

"Hey stop! Theif!" He shouts, heart cracking in his chest. And even as he jolts, moving to run after the figure shoving his way through the crowd of startled onlookers, Yinsen has grabbed the back of his shirt to hold him back.

Tony expects to watch the thief disappear out of sight but to his surprise the thief is suddenly stopped by a figure stepping in front of his path and the two bodies collide, wrestling each other to the ground.

A sharp whistle blows and a moment later a pair of police officers appear, grabbing the two young men roughly and yanking them to their feet in order to break up the commotion.

The thief curses in Hungarian as he is roughly searched. The officer, finding Tony's small wallet glances about. Spotting him standing with Yinsen beside the car his eyes widen in recognition. Few people are rich enough for private vehicles and everyone who doesn't know his Uncle Isiah says Tony's the spitting image of his father.

Tony's heart is still in his hands when the other officer snatches Tony's journal from the hands of the young man who'd intervened before the thief had gotten away.

He's tall and on the hungry side of lean but he's got broad shoulders and a sturdiness to his frame that tell Tony he's probably a good worker. He's what Hughard would call prime stock, the sort of man he'd hire in a blink to do the heavy work at the Yard, except for his skin is darker. Darker than anyone else Tony has seen. He's a negro.

He's also being yelled at and yanked about by the police officer who Tony realizes intends to arrest him. The older boy is trying to explain, in a garbled mix of German and Hungarian, but the officer either doesn't speak it or he doesn't care what the negro boy has to say.

"Hey no, he's not the thief," Tony interjects before Yinsen or the driver can stop him, slipping his small body between the officer and the young man he intends to arrest. The negro boy is glaring stubbornly at the officers but his body is trembling against Tony's back and he's suddenly frightened. What will happen to this boy if the police take him away? He's read Crime and Punishment so he has a fair idea.

He jabs angrily in the direction of the other boy. "There's your thief. This man saved my things! Why are you arresting him?"

"This nigger?" The officer asks incredulously as if he can't believe a word of it. "They were probably in it together you know. You can't trust these people."

"Are you trying to win something or are you naturally this stupid?" Tony sneers and he can hear Yinsen release a small moan of dismay. With more assurance than he feels, Tony stares the police officer down, whose lip has curled into a snarl.

"Your job isn't to arrest helpful bystanders. Leave him alone."

For a horrible moment Tony thinks the officer is going to arrest the young man out of spite, but thankfully self-preservation wins out. Tony is a Stark man and that means something.

"Our apologies Master Stark." He grumbles looking none too happy.

Tony is jubilant when they go, carting off the real thief but for some reason the negro boy is shaking his head and muttering at him under his breath.

"You made him mad. Now he'll have it out for me."

Tony's heart sinks, frowning after the retreating figures of the police in thought.

"Thank you for saving my journal," he tries anyway, beaming gratefully up at the older boy. "You have no idea all the work you just saved me. It took me ages to get this far. Course I remember everything but there's just _so much_  to think about all the time, it gets real cluttered up there. Do you ever have that problem? I suppose you don't, but trust me it's a nightmare. Somebody should invent something that does all the remembering and the sorting for you – hey!"

The boy is walking away from them, shaking his head more and continuing to mutter. Tony catches in rough German what sounds like "crazy as a cuckoo bird."

Tony thinks that's the last he'll see of the boy but he wonders about him for days after that, fearful that his big mouth really had gotten his rescuer in trouble – imagining him rotting in a prison somewhere for some petty crime he didn't commit, because he wouldn't. He's not that sort of person. Tony can tell. He's the sort of person who steps in front of a thief because it's the right thing, even if it brings him trouble.

When a beggar shows up at the kitchen door one night demanding to see Master Stark Ana is shocked. Thankfully Tony is there keeping her company and reading up on Africa. When he hears his voice, he knows it's the boy who saved his journal and Tony leaps out of his chair.

Sure enough the negro boy is standing there, looking thinner than ever but still stall and broad shoulder and squaring his jaw with stiff pride as he looks down at Tony.

"It's you." Tony gapes and the boy goes even stiffer.

"Look, I wouldn't come only... there's word going around that I'm a thief and none of the farmers will give me work. I'm just hungry is all and I'll work for it fair, and seeing how it's that copper tellin everybody I'm no good. Way I see it is you owe me."

"Ah so this is your hero is it?" Ana guesses, shoulders relaxing as her mouth tugs into a smile. Tony feels his face heat as the boy's eyes widen in question.

"He can have some food can't he?" Tony pleads. He can see by the shadow that passes over Ana's eyes that she's thinking what Tony already knows. Hughard would have a fit to come home and find a negro eating in their kitchen. "We have plenty, and he risked his life to save my journal. Surely that's worth something. A pastry even? Ana makes the best pastries. Unless you're allergic to berries. You're not, are you?" Tony babbles and Ana grins at the boy's dumbfounded expression.

"What's your name young man?"

"Rhuza, Mam" the boy answers and Tony perks up.

"Is that African?"

"Greek," the boy replies tersely. "Most people just call me Rhodes."

Tony doesn't learn till later that what he means is that when they were unloading slaves in Budapest that his great grandfather and all the other men from the island got tagged Rhodes because nobody cared what their names really were.

"Well thank you, Rhuza Rhodes, for coming to our Tony's rescue. He's talked of nothing else." Ana says with a smile, opening the door wide and beckoning the boy inside. Tony fidgets, torn between nerves that Hughard will walk in any moment and too much excitement to care.

Ana feeds him up and Rhodey (he doesn't know he's Rhodey yet but he is) doesn't talk much, scarfing down the food Ana places in front of him almost before she's finished setting it down and Tony talks his ear off.

"… and don't you think it's strange how it's so cold there? It's not very green at all so why is it called Greenland?"

"Don't suppose I know." Rhodey shrugs. "Somebody must have thought it was green enough."

Tony beams because Rhodey doesn't tell him he talks too much (well not at first, but later it's with love so he's allowed) or to stop prattling on about silly nothings the way that Hughard does. He listens, and Tony does not know a single person even close to his own age who will listen to him.

And that's how Tony makes his first friend, but his heart is sinking because he knows Hughard will never allow it. He'll send Rhodey away and Rhodey will either end up in prison for stealing food, starved to death, or getting on a ship to somewhere else. None of which Tony finds acceptable.

But when Hughard walks into the kitchen a moment later with Mama and demands an explanation he actually lets Ana give it. And maybe it's because Mama smiles at Rhodey and reminds Hughard that Jarvis was just asking about bringing one of the local boys on to help with the heavier labor around the villa, but Hughard does not get livid or tell Rhodey he has to go.

Later he learns it's because Stark men always pay their debts. Tony was dumb enough to get robbed and his journal could have fallen into anybody's hands. And where does Tony think half his ideas come from? When Tony takes notes on his father's work and dreams up his little toys does he even realize what a risk he's taking? The competition would kill to get their hands on Hughard's designs.

But for now...

"What's your name son?" Hughard barks, all seriousness, at Rhodey.

Rhuza, Master Stark. Rhuza Rhodes."

Hughard scoffs, mouth twisting like he's tasted something sour.

"It's no wonder Fischer's got everybody thinking you're a trouble maker, name sounds as foreign as snow in July. What you need is a solid name, a good Christian name, one that isn't going to make people nervous. See?"

Rhodey tightens his lips but he is no fool. He nods his agreement silently and Hughard accepts this, nodding decisively as if something has been settled.

And that is how James Rhodes comes to be employed at the summer Villa, though he is only ever James to Tony's parents and those who visit the staff.

To Tony he is always just Rhodey. Rhodey who stepped in when he didn't have to. Who always does. Rhodey who follows Tony even though he thinks he's crazy because somebody has to keep him out of trouble. Rhodey who cares.

Rhodey who is smart and knows when to hold his tongue but doesn't mince his words where it matters and is the first person brave enough to see how stupid Tony really can be sometimes (how flawed) and loves him anyway.

He's fifteen and they've just escaped out the back gate, shirking Tony's lessons and Rhodey's morning chores to go swimming down at the little cove they discovered the summer Tony was eleven, the one that nobody else knows about (probably). And they're going to catch hell when they get back, but it's hot enough to melt the skin off their bones and Tony doesn't care.

In two short years, this will be gone. War will rip apart the country, Rhodey will enlist, Tony's parents will be dead and Tony will be locked behind the walls of a monastery to be forgotten. No one left who cares enough to remember him.

But here in his memories the sun is beating down bright and the water is blue as anything as he runs towards the edge of the low cliff side.

"Last one in is a monkey's uncle!" He shouts, just as he's overtaken by Rhodey, his long powerful legs carrying him past Tony in a blur of speed and laughter.

"Guess that monkey's you then Tony." He shouts back before launching himself over the edge.

In this moment Tony is free and happy and the warmth that fills into his heart is evidence of Hughard's failure.

He tried, for whatever his reasons, to drive the soft out of Tony, and in a lot of ways he succeeded.

But in the ways that matter, he did not.

Hughard creates the forge, he lets the fires roar unchecked and applies a dangerous amount of pressure until something lessor would have cracked and splintered.

Tony never breaks. There is iron in him after all.

And what Hughard Stark never seemed to appreciate is this: Iron, is a relatively soft metal.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought, it's strange to be doing this without FIOT to bounce off but all an all I'm happy with it. Though Tony makes me so sad sometimes. Steeeeve. Just give him so loving already. 
> 
> Also please see that added to series list is a Marvel Character list full of the Marvel characters who have and have yet to appear in the story. Thank you for the recommendation cuckoosnest! There is a lot of crossover build we put into the story, some that literally just pass by and give us a chuckle (like Frauline Glass) that we don't expect everyone to know but if you desire a reference the list is up now. And another point for cuckoosnest, who also observed that a few characters aren't Marvel at all. Well spotted you. ;)


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